Future of the Space Business: How Private Rocketeers Got Real

To achieve liftoff at this watershed moment when they could begin to usurp NASA's stranglehold on space, billionaires rely on the propulsive power of profit in an industry based on competition and smarts. Click here to hear Glenn Reynolds break down the odds of when moguls will really mine space—and when you could lift off yourself—on the Popular Mechanics Show podcast!

On Memorial Day weekend, I got a glimpse of something new -- the beginning of a new kind of Space Age.

For the first time in more than a decade, I attended the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference, which was held in Dallas this year. In the late 1980s and early '90s, I attended quite a few of these conferences, which had something of the aura of a science-fiction convention: The people who turned out for them believed in the dream of human settlement in space, but "dream" was the operative word. There was bold talk, but not much was happening to turn that dream into reality.

This time things were different. I had barely arrived when I found myself in an elevator with some Brioni-clad venture-capital types. At the Dallas conference, unlike the earlier ones, I noticed a surprisingly large number of these players in attendance, as well as investment bankers and big-firm lawyers. About five years ago, I saw a similar phenomenon at nanotechnology conferences, as the field moved from the province of dreamers and true believers to the province of people who expected to make a buck.

The space business has attracted entrepreneurs for a couple of decades, of course, and a few of them, such as private-launch pioneer Orbital Sciences, have built rockets and made money. But partly as a result of the new enthusiasm created by the Ansari X Prize competition, won in 2004 by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, the trickle of non-vapor-ware space ventures has turned into a flood.

John Carmack, lead programmer for Doom, was there to talk about his venture Armadillo Aerospace, profiled in PM last year ("Crash Test," Aug. '06). Armadillo brought along its Pixel lunar lander craft, which will compete this October in New Mexico for a $2 million prize at the NASA-sponsored Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. Carmack sounded confident, and reported that the military has funded additional research and development of the Pixel, and that commercial operators are showing considerable interest.

Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane Global touted the company's sub­orbital rocket plane, which will take paying passengers to 62.5 miles for a look at space and a few minutes of zero gravity. Rocketplane is also working on an orbital spacecraft.

The company founded by Budget Suites mogul Robert Bigelow to build orbital hotels has already launched its first spacecraft, Gen­esis I, into orbit. Bigelow was conferring with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism outfit, which hopes to start flying passengers into space on Rutan's SpaceShipTwo craft in 2009. A partnership between Bigelow and Branson, two travel industry visionaries, makes a lot of sense.

SpaceDev's Jim Benson announced major changes in his Dream Chaser space tourism/launch vehicle. One of the most striking things about the disclosure was the adaptability that it demonstrated: Faced with design issues, SpaceDev was able to make changes and proceed with minimal delays, something that it's hard to imagine NASA pulling off. The for-profit guys are a lot more flexible than the space agency -- that's what happens when you're spending your own money instead of the taxpayers'.

And that's another change that I noticed at this conference. In the old days, when people talked about financing space activity, they meant getting Congress to appropriate money, usually via NASA's budget. This time, although there was talk about the 2008 elections and what they would mean for space, the focus was different. No one I talked to had high hopes for major government space initiatives. Instead, the main concern was ensuring that Congress and bureaucrats wouldn't somehow manage to wreck what's regarded as a scene that's vibrant and promising all on its own. The future, most people felt, was with the space entrepreneurs, not the space agencies.

I think that's probably right. In fact, what struck me about the conference wasn't just the plethora of big ventures like those listed above, but also the development of a secondary infrastructure of suppliers and contractors supporting those ventures. Engines, avionics, launch facilities: Companies specializing in these things are growing, too, and space entrepreneurs can now turn to a number of proven suppliers for many of their needs without having to develop everything from scratch.

And much of the credit for that change goes to the Ansari X Prize. On my way to the conference, I read an advance copy of Michael Belfiore's new book on the private space industry, Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space. Belfiore surveys a wide range of space ventures, from established ones like Rutan's to startups operating out of ­garages. The role of the X Prize competition in jumpstarting most of them is obvious. Belfiore suggests that the new entrepreneurial space world is starting to resemble the personal computer world in the mid-1970s: It hasn't broken through yet, but it's got the critical mass to make that kind of breakthrough possible. I think he's on to something.

Another reminder of the computer industry's early days was less tangible, but just as real. These space capitalists want to succeed financially, sure, but they want their competitors to succeed, too. Like the early computer pioneers, they are as excited about the revolutionary prospects for their field as they are about making money. That enthusiasm seems to be an important formula for success.

I said that this is the beginning of a new Space Age. Perhaps I should have said it's the end of the beginning, as things are starting to take off. I bought my first laptop computer 10 years after the mid-1970s home computer debut. On that timetable, I should be in orbit around 2017 -- on a journey that is looking more and more plausible.

Launched in July 2006, Genesis I is the test phase of one entrepreneur's plans for the first space hotel; another test went off in late June. (Photograph courtesy of Bigelow)

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